AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I wanted to please him. I wanted to give the presentation his raised eyebrows asked for, about Artemisian history. I wanted him to think I could do that well.
I want him to like me.Oh, no.
I felt my face start to twist into a scowl, as the logical, egalitarian part of my brain reacted to the unwelcome realization. Then another thought crowded in, and I took a fearful little breath, my left hand—the one attached to the arm the major didn’t have hold of—instinctively going behind me to shield my still-sore bottom.
A sound whipping. If Major Harrow gave a bad report of me to whomever waited inside the mansion—the center… I would get…
The incipient scowl changed to a deep frown of fear and embarrassment. All of this had probably taken two, perhaps three seconds of thinking on my part, so I supposed the major’s steady, patient gaze didn’t represent an unusually long time to wait for a response. I had the feeling nevertheless as I looked into his brown eyes that he understood every thought that had just passed through my confused consciousness.
“It’s…” I began, hardly realizing I had started to speak. I had to clear my throat and swallow because again my mouth had gone dry, and I sounded so weak and unlike myself. I felt anew that awful, pleasant desire to do as Major Harrow had told me to do: to win his praise and to get a good report.
“It’s ground from two columns that stood in front of the most important court in the most powerful country of old Earth at the time of the first economic collapse,” I said, gaining confidence as I went. “Here on Artemisia we believe in a new birth of equality, and we are privileged to tread down the patriarchal oppression of ages past.”
Major Harrow’s smile widened. Warmth at having obeyed him and dismay at that reaction spread through my upper body in a new bloom of heat that I felt certain had turned my face bright pink.
“Good girl,” the major said. “Let’s go inside. It’s time for you to learn how the patriarchy responds to that sort of gesture.”
CHAPTER7
Philip
Withers and I walked Sara into the magnificent front entry hall of the former presidential residence. When she gasped and drew back at what she saw—whom she saw—waiting for her inside, I was ready; I put my hand on the small of her back and kept her from moving backwards.
Sara turned toward me, her hands flying to cover herself as she tried at the same time to escape and to appeal to me. I felt an abrupt and unexpected need to concentrate on my own actions. Something in the delicious sensation of touching her bare skin there, on her back, so close to her lovely little bottom, so possessively and yet so frankly, seemed to let me hear her very thoughts. Despite my having given her the first real punishment of her life, and then displayed her naked in front of her neighbors, Sara understood on a level deeper than she could even yet know that I had her best interest at heart. She turned toward me rather than away, when she saw who stood in the entry hall of the reformation center, because the hope had risen in her that I would shield her from the terrible shame and distress that had just seized her body and her mind.
I had to keep my attention focused on my duty—to her and to the federation—because the imaginary connection between us that had started back in Sara’s apartment had only grown, at least in my mind. I thought I could tell, from that same turn toward me, that she felt it too, as unaccountable and dismaying as it must seem to her. In that crucial moment I found that the girl had intoxicated my senses slightly, and it took a little effort to keep the expression on my face neutral and professional.
“No,” Sara said weakly, looking up into my face. For a moment I thought she might even come closer—might reach her hands out from her lovely naked charms to take hold of me and try to hide her face in my chest, as a girl might with an accepted suitor. I thought I could read in her own expression that the same idea had entered her mind: her eyes widened a little more even than they had gone at the sight of the person standing by the newly installed reception desk in the center of the hall. Sara drew back, attempting to turn in the other direction, as if to escape from my hand, which I moved to hold her around the waist.
“Hello, Sara,” said Viola Herranofar, the newly deposed president of Artemisia.
“No,” Sara said again. “Please.”
Viola’s face wore a mask of regret. Two Magisterians stood to either side of the former chief executive, one a uniformed officer and the other a dark-suited diplomat: Admiral Meeks of the Federation Fleet and Prince Hendren of Magisteria. It would doubtless have seemed unremarkable on another occasion, but the fact that Viola had on a rather stunning, if simple, blue dress definitely added a good deal to Sara’s obvious discomfiture.
The naked girl had her hands back over her breasts and her cunny now, desperate to hide them from the woman who had served as her boss and her supreme leader. I had a flash of anger at the ousted commander in chief for what she had done to this whip-smart, passionate, gorgeous, and completely unsuspecting young woman.
Viola had a sympathetic look on her face and she clearly felt sorrow and shame about this meeting. In the end, I knew, Sara’s reformation would make her a great deal happier than she could have been under Artemisia’s former egalitarian system; Magisteria science’s analysis of a woman like Sara’s—a ‘complicated’ woman’s—submissive tendencies didn’t lie. The suitability and benefit of the training Sara would receive, however, didn’t change the dishonor brought by Viola’s betrayal. The former president had shamed herself utterly, I thought, in handing her secretary of public relations over for reformation. Worst of all, Viola had done it to avoid undergoing the same fate herself—Viola’s own submissive profile being nearly as perfect a match for the program as Sara’s.
Well, Madam Former President, I thought as I looked at the beautiful woman who had tears in her eyes that I found less than convincing,you chose the real punishment, didn’t you? You get to watch Sara experience all the things you truly need and will never be able to ask for.
Sara
I couldn’t look at Viola. I felt Major Harrow’s hand on my naked hip. His strong fingers had curled around to the front of my hipbone, to control me. The sensation came much, much too close to the place where my own hand had traveled, involuntarily, to keep my traitorous boss and the Magisterians from seeing my naked lap.
I kept my head turned to the side, looking at a portrait of Artemisia’s first president and trying to stop myself from paying attention to the possessive gesture of the officer at my side, the way it made me feel like I had become his property, since he had stripped me and spanked me. I had instantly given up my attempt to twist away from him at the moment he took hold of my waist, but I held myself turned in the opposite direction, and my hands clutched at my private places, mortifyingly exposed in front of the elegantly clothed president.
“Sara…” I heard Viola say. “I’m…”
“Sara,” Major Harrow said sternly, “I thought you were going to behave yourself. I thought you wanted to keep from getting a whipping as soon as you’ve arrived. Put your hands on your head this instant and look your former boss in the eye.”
He moved his hand from my hip. He put it on my bottom and squeezed gently, so that I started, jumping forward a little as he brought back the lingering soreness there.
I had to look at Viola then; I couldn’t help it, because I had to know if she had seen what Major Harrow had done, and if she understood the degradation meant by the way he touched me—if she could indeed condone this fate she had, it seemed, visited on me.
Her beautiful face, framed by her perfectly coifed raven hair, had a look of anguish on it. I saw in her dark, sorrowful eyes that she had indeed done it: she had offered me up for this horrible reformation—whatever that meant.
I returned that look with one of despair. Suddenly I wanted to show her precisely what she had done to me. Slowly, I started to obey the major’s order; I straightened up, feeling his big hand still on my bottom as if in a continuing warning of what would happen if I stepped out of line. I could see in Viola’s eyes—the way they flicked down a little and to the side before returning to my face—that she took in every little movement Major Harrow made. Yes, she could see that the Magisterian officer had made himself my master, and her gaze searched my face as if in hope of learning how that made me feel.
